The atheros chip uses a binary blob, so it's not loaded by default, at least for DragonFly.

http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/users/2008-11/msg00023.html

Of course, it looks like it didn't boot to the point where you could have used it. It could be a problem with the USB system - maybe the loader couldn't find the kernel on the USB DVD drive. You can boot the normal DragonFly installer in a different computer and pick the netboot option, and install over the network. I was able to do this to get DragonFly on a Sony laptop that had no CD-ROM at all.

If these things were just a little cheaper, I'd try it myself. How do you like the keyboard?

Hello there, there has been this interesting EeeBSD project and its for the 700 series, but it seems generally similar, also for the wireless chipset try this blob instead of the one listed ( http://snapshots.madwifi-project.org/special/madwifi-ng-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz ) since its simply just the newest revision for what is used.Good luck :P

freebsd 8.0 works pretty much flawlessly. ive been running it for about 3 months now and everything pretty much works. wlan and ethernet work out of the box, although i had to create wlan0 for ath0 to work properly. the only real problem that ive run into is disk space. my 900a only has a 4g ssd and its maxed out(w/o ports installed). i havent been able to update anything on it due to disk space. so i think im going to reinstall and put /usr on an sd card or something. heres my how to http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=5897